


We Could Have Had a Meet Cute

by Northisnotup



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: A series of disconnected prompts, Awkward Flirting, Disaster Gay Peter Nureyev, First Meetings, Flirting, M/M, Other, POV Peter Nureyev, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24227320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northisnotup/pseuds/Northisnotup
Summary: A series of disconnected prompts from various meet-ugly lists on tumblr.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 7
Kudos: 48





	We Could Have Had a Meet Cute

**Author's Note:**

> This is spawned from me having too many angsty or intense fics right now and needing a damn break. And for SJ who enables me.
> 
> Thanks, as always, goes to Rox for making sense of whats in my head. And thank you to Saner for this, specific prompt.
> 
> I'm on twitter and tumblr at this same handle, if you'd like to drop by with a prompt.

To say the night was not going according to plan would have been an understatement of the nth degree. 

To point, Peter was currently clinging haphazardly to a balcony eighteen floors above the Martian surface. In a part of the city where the 'Martian surface' was composed of garbage, bodies and gutters constantly flowing with gray, barely treated water. Sunshine and sim wind were prioritized for the richer neighborhoods.

Would this normally be a set back? Well, yes. Ordinarily, he would never be in this position. But plan A went out the window, and plans B through H rapidly followed until he was left with the very last contingency. A contingency which was then thrown for a loop by a stray grenade and the introduction of his head to a concrete wall.

The possible (probable) light concussion was not the only reason Peter continued to cling to the balcony instead of nimbly scaling up it, but it was the largest and most prominent. 

The second reason was the blaster in his face. 

His dazed eyes followed the blaster to wide, scarred hands, up shapely and well muscled arms to broad shoulders and then to a snarling face so objectively lovely Peter felt his grip slip.

“Whoa!”

Those hands were just as strong as they looked, quickly wrapping around Peter’s arms instead of the blaster grip.

His ascent from dangling eighteen floors up to sprawled-charmingly, he thought, like a muddled marble statue come to life-across a beautiful stranger’s balcony was not without struggle.

“What do you have in your pockets, bricks?” The stranger grunted, and Peter almost answered, without thought. His voice was a smooth tenor, rough with the sleep that Peter’s abrupt landing must have roused him from, but divine even under strain.

Peter, for all his own hardwon strength, was not an overly muscled man. No, he was more likely to be described as waifish, lithe, sleek, wiry; svelte even. But he was also a rather tall man, and it took him more effort than he would have liked to coordinate his limbs to help rather than hinder. 

“Okay, not what I thought I’d be doing with my night, but hey. Not like I was sleeping well anyway,” the man collapsed beside him, and now that they were on level and without the ever present danger of losing his life hanging above his head like the sword of Democles, Peter could truly take in the vision of enchantment who saved him.

Or could have, if the blaster had not returned. 

“You’re brash sure, but you’re neither tattooed enough or ugly enough to be Triad. You’re in blues and grays instead of solid black, which means you do this enough you know how best to blend into the night. High fashion too. You know how to dress, which could mean Kanagawa, but besides your tee….uh, I mean. You’re not modded, anyway and that’s not really their style. Vicky settled things with the Venesian government. Or - she said she did, but who knows with her. So, who are you and who sent you?” 

“You know, you’re very handsome when you’re like this,” Peter found himself saying, instead of any of the pretty, believable lies he should have been spinning. Instead of babbling about how he was so thankful to be saved and really, he was only just slightly tipsy, he promised, and lived a few floors up and my, had they lived in the same building all this time and never met, how _odd!_

The stranger huffed out a humorless laugh, “Like what? Holding you at blaster point?”

“Morally outraged,” Peter said, near crooning it, actually. He was too out of sorts to feel the sharp press of concern he normally would have, and without it was left with only a deep and slightly star struck admiration for all the details this righteous man had put together so quickly. 

The blaster wavered.

Or perhaps it didn’t. It was hard to tell between the lamps and advertisements that littered the streets and the buzz in and around Peter’s ears that rose and fell like waves crashing against a shore, periodically blurring his vision.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Wonderful, now that you’re here. My hero,” Peter sighed.

And he did look like a hero. Rugged, captivating beauty, with his single deep blue eye staring at Peter with unhidden concern. Scars through his brow, over his nose and surrounding the socket of his other eye. His smooth, dark brown skin shone jewel-like in Hyperion’s ever present neon glow. 

“O...kay. Now I know there’s something wrong. So what _were_ you after then, huh?” 

“Hm? Oh, nothing important, darling. Nothing you need to worry about, in any case. It was...terribly boring, all in all. I’m so much more interested in you.”

“So you were just trying to break into my apartment, accidentally?”

“Sadly, yes,” Peter mumbled from dry lips and gasped, quite unintentionally, as a strobe of white light trailed its way across the man in front of him, catching and reflecting off his sleepwear. 

Lace in some soft, washed out colour lay lovingly over one broad shoulder and trailed whimsically down to kiss the muscled outline of the man’s chest, modestly covering half of it. The other half fell teasingly low, dragged down by gravity and the freedom offered by the other strap as it slipped off his other shoulder to trail over a bicep. Peter had never been jealous of a strip of lace before, but in that exact moment, he swore he would trade in every alias, every trick, every _treasure_ he had to also be touching that man’s skin.

“Hey! My eye is up here.”

“And what a lovely eye. Like the furious depths of the Neptunian oceans,” Neptune was covered, more or less, in water, only a few domes and terraformed land masses covered it’s surfaces. The storms that raged across the open expanses of sea were legendary. Few who sailed into it ever returned.

Looking into his hero’s remaining eye was like that. 

“Right. You honestly expect me to believe that?”

“That your eye is the colour of -”

His hero cut him off, “That you just happened upon my balcony?”

“Believe what you will. Now, can a man know the name of his rescuer?”

The man shifted closer warily, and Peter held still, almost holding his breath. “Juno Steel,” he offered, going to holster his weapon and realizing he had nowhere to holster it as Peter realized that the man’s - _Juno’s_ gloriously muscled legs were also on full display. His shapely calves led to thighs Peter could very clearly imagine wrapping around his waist or squeezing his head...he sighed, trying not to pout as his gaze met the edge of shorts. They matched the camisole that draped across Juno’s broad chest; a dark, tight pair that could, to a lesser man, be mistaken for boxer-briefs if not for the lace. 

“Juno,” Peter smiled, savoring the name on his tongue, “well, that explains it, don’t you think?”

“Explains what?” 

“I was praying for salvation, and here you are, a goddess of mercy,” he tried to sound as suggestive as he could, and was more than gratified when Juno smiled. He stifled it immediately, but it soon flickered across his face again, and Peter was helpless but to return it full force.

If his eye was the raging sea, then his smile was the swirling mass of stars out the view of a ship. Vast and awe inspiring. Radiant.

“I’m not a goddess of anything, least of all mercy,” he griped, ducking his head to try and hide the smile that kept creeping onto his full lips no matter how he so valiantly tried to hide it, making Peter’s heart swell with pride. “So, you gonna tell me who I’m supposedly saving?”

“Not yet,” Peter said, and, slowly and with great effort shifted onto his side. He couldn’t be sure that he would give the right name, didn’t trust his tongue to openly lie to the heavenly being in front of him.

But what he _could_ do was arrange himself to best show his assets and what he could offer. Peter tilted his head in a way he knew would send his hair curling across his forehead like a daring scoundrel when Juno yelped. His lovely face going ashen, even in the low mutlicoloured glow. 

“O-oh, wow, you’re bleeding...kind of a lot.”

Peter frowned, “It’s just a scratch,” he attempted to shrug it off without shrugging, as his shoulders were a throbbing pulse of pain, but Juno was staring, eye wide and horrified at the other side of his face. Peter knew there would be no saving their previous flirtation. He tried anyway. “Juno, it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be right as rain with a little rest.”

And some top notch medical attention.

“That’s...a lot of blood.”

He sounded weak, the poor thing, and swayed where he sat. 

“Oh, alright,” Peter sighed, and though it took three tries, he did manage to get his comms from his pocket and unlock it before sliding it over. “You may call my doctor, if you must. Her name is Vespa, under ‘I.’” 

“Vespa Undereye?” Juno scoffed.

“No, her last name starts with the letter ‘I,’” Peter couldn’t stifle a giggle. “Ilkay, Vespa.”

“And you trust her to pick you up?”

“For the amount I pay her, I trust her very well indeed.”

“Good,” Juno didn’t seem exactly satisfied by that, but it was all Peter could offer. “This is so stupid. I should be calling the cops, not a back alley surgeon.”

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Peter swore.

Juno licked his lips, and Peter wanted nothing more in this world than to lay his own across them. “You better,” he said finally, and turned away, raising the comms to his ear

By the very stars, how was Peter to do anything but submit to the pleading gaze of his new religious figure? If he was a very good boy, and he knew how to be a very good boy, maybe when he was better, Juno would even let him worship.


End file.
